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Topic: New iPhone: Final Nail in the Coffin (Read 38855 times)

I don't really get that excited about these sorts of things, but I thought it would be an interesting conversation starter, especially since there is ZERO going on with Canon products these days.

New iPhone:10 frames per second; in-camera stabilization, white and amber flashes that can be balanced with ambient light, f2.2 lens, larger sensor, slow-motion video. (If I got the specs right)

Announcement was accompanied by a slide showing a DSLR and a boatload of equipment, apparently implying that instead of all that, you can use your iPhone and get the same shots.

Is this the final nail in the coffin for Powershots and other Point and Shoots? Should Canon and Nikon worry about their DSLR sales? Try to think outside your own personal prejudices and look at it objectively. What do you think?

canon rumors FORUM

I just read a recap of the Apple announcement and was wondering the same thing. DSLRs still have a huge image quality advantage of smartphone cameras but the gap is narrowing quickly for sure. I was astounded at the quality of my iPhone 5 images on an overseas trip this summer even though they weren't quite in the same league as my Canon. There were a few times on the trip I was able to take iPhone snapshots with great results instead of hauling out my Canon equipment (sort of liberating). What I'd like to see in Canon's next DSLR announcements is some of the more innovative features that are showing up in the smartphone cameras like those announced by Apple today. Come on Canon, get with it!

I've never had an iPhone but I do use the wife's iPad, and it's too slow for sports and too noisy for indoor/low light situations. My cell phone is about as dumb as can be -- no data, no internet, no text; just use it as a phone. Am I in the minority? Absolutely.

P&S sales will continue to go down until the smart phones saturate the market, but they'll still sell in the hundreds of thousands/millions. The problem with cell phones is that they are size limited. They are expected to fit in pockets (at least for guys), and they still need to provide all the other functions expected of them. P&Ss can be larger, and can use better lenses, larger sensors to their advantage. Perhaps whatever replaced the CMOS sensors will be able to make smaller sensors as good as FF today, but until those disruptive technologies arrive, we're stuck with incremental improvement.

A lot of friends use the phone as the primary camera already, but the quality of the pictures taken are not very good and they don't back up the data. So, what happens if the phone is lost/damaged/stolen? They get a new one, but they've lost everything. There goes a few years of pictures. Maybe they can get some reduced sized versions from Facebook or whichever app they use, but those often aren't high enough resolution to print. And when those companies go out of business or change their model, there is no guarantee that those images would be preserved.

Photography is a mostly a hobby for me, and I do it to preserve memories. I might have a dozen pics of my grandparents, and a few dozen of my parents before they got married, and a few hundred of them since then. Now that I've had kids, I've snapped thousands of pictures. We take the best ones to create digital scrapbooks (easier to duplicate if the kids want their own copies later), and then print them. My kids are young, but they've already forgotten a lot and they get a kick from looking at the scrapbooks, which jog our memories and get the conversations going. Those conversations don't happen looking at an iPad. Quite a few friends have remarked how they wished they had scrapbooks/photo calendars like that, but they don't have the pictures to make it worthwhile. When film was king, everyone developed their rolls and got prints. Those prints usually were stored in shoeboxes in closets, under the bed, etc. but people still had them. What will people have to show the next generation?

I've found the iphone images to be poor except under perfect lighting. Even a cheap point and shoot does better if the light starts to get challenging.

Its not always about the best IQ. If you do a direct comparison, iphone 5 (or even Sony xperia, which has the best camera in smartphones) will never be able to match the IQ of P&S (forget SLRs and mirrorless). However it has become good enough for most people (if not great) which combined with convenience push it above P&S. Phone spends considerable time of day in your hands and is handy when you don't even have time to take the camera out of bag. I and majority of people cannot keep camera in the pocket 24X7 (in addition to phone, wallet and keys). So, even though I always have/had P&S in the bag, I realized I did not get chance to shoot it even once past year. I used SLR for 95% of my photography and iphone5 for rest of the 'to capture a moment instantly' photography. It is also because I mostly photograph family, travel, nature and astro (places where I can choose to carry SLR easily). Looks like I represent the majority behavior and could be the reason for the demise of the P&S. Also important to the equation is the fact that even my 18 month old learned to take photos on iphone (simple and intuitive controls). I being a total control freak hate it about iphone but majority of people like it. They really just want to point and shoot avoiding all that fiddling with controls.

I hate my iPhone 5, the 5s should have been the iPhone 5 no doubt. So now I will wait for the 6. Damn you apple! But thanks for sharing the specs on the camera on the 5s looks like a decent step forward for apple. Finally starting to show me what I expected from apple.

I hate my iPhone 5, the 5s should have been the iPhone 5 no doubt. So now I will wait for the 6. Damn you apple! But thanks for sharing the specs on the camera on the 5s looks like a decent step forward for apple. Finally starting to show me what I expected from apple.

Its never worth to upgrade every year anyways (unless you are fanboy), esp. with costs involved in breaking the 2 yr contract (assuming you are in US). I too hate apple for high handedness and product hysteria they whip up but I hate other smartphones more (and yes, I have tried all dead/alive mobile OSs)

Their promo photos never look like the actual ones. I'm guessing around the iPhone 10S we finally see the death of the P&S.

P&S are not going to die even with iphone 10S. Due to size (thickness) constraint, iphones will never be able to match the IQ of P&S projecting current technologies. They will just see a major dip in sales and their turf taken by shrinking and improving mirrorless cameras

I didn't know about the IS, will need to read more about that. However I did read that the sensor is 15% larger and the aperture of the lens has gone from f/2.5 to f/2.2. All that equates to a 33% increase in light sensitivity. Sounds good but isn't that just 1/3 of a stop more? We all know how insignificant that really is. Might make a small difference in low light situations? (I think I'll do an experiment ...)

10fps sounds like 1DX territory but it takes 10 and spits out a few of the best. So you don't actually get to keep the full 10? And what is the buffer like? Does it take 10 then shut down or let you shoot continuous for longer than 1s? Could just be marketing gimmekry.

The iphone5 camera (what i have) is pretty good and I wont be upgrading anytime soon. Especially not for 1/3 of a stop and one extra LED!

The improvements are welcome though and it's nice to see Apple thinking about photographers and not just bumping up the resolution.